Cryptography Resources for CS 407 -- Codes and Internet Security

"A billion billion is a large number, but it's not that large a number."
ÇWhitfield Diffie, Co-inventer of public key cryptography

Good Web Sites on Cryptography and Related Issues

RSA's Web site. The Public Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS), description of the RSA method by its inventors, and more.

Cryptography Research's Web site. The folks who helped design the machine that broke 56 bit key DES for the EEF. You make it, they break it (maybe). Links to over 370 cryptography papers on-line.

COSIC, the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography Group at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.

EEF's DES Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Digital Encription Standard Cracker Project. For one quarter of a megabuck, they built a massively parallel machine that broke the 56 bit key DES by exhausting ALL possible keys in only 3 days!

EEF's Web site. Always the best source for privacy and other social issues relating to the Web. Sometimes good technical links.

"How Hackers Break In ...", a breathless but realistic account of how the evil Abednego hacks Refrigerators R US, but is finally given his just deserts by the virtuous Dogberry. Real tips on how to hack, and why not to try it.

"Firewalls", "Digital Certificates" and "The Java Sandbox", three short,one-page descriptions.

"Cryptography for the Internet", by PGP's Zimmerman! Extensive discussion of cryptographic methods, their strengths and weaknesses.

"The Case against Regulating Encription Technology", short public policy paper by RSA's Rivest!

Scientific American, August 1979, "The Mathematics of Public Key Cryptography" , by Martin E. Hellman (of Diffie-Hellman). Still one of the best descriptions ever.

Scientific American, August 1977, "Mathematical Games" column by Martin Gardner. This is the column that brought the FBI to Martin Gardner's door.

Good Books on Cryptography and Related Issues

Privacy on the Line by Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau, MIT Press, 1998.

PGP: Pretty Good Privacy by Simson Garfinkel, O'Reilly, 1995 (one of the texts for this course).